Surface treatment compositions, for use on non-food contact and food contact surfaces, are known. Effective surface treatment compositions that have the capacity to disinfect and/or sanitize surfaces in addition, or in alternative to, being used to clean surfaces, are especially useful in food and dairy processing, which are vulnerable to problems with microbial contamination due to the prevalence of microbial food sources. Most surface treatment compositions are either in the form of concentrated liquids requiring dilution prior to use, or are in the form of ready-to-use liquids.
Surface treatment compositions in the form of powders are also known in the industry, but are less common than liquid ones, which can be easier to dilute and/or apply. Some known surface treatment powders require dilution in water prior to application to a surface to be treated. Other known surface treatment powders are applied dry and allowed to reside on a surface to be treated over a period of time. To effectively treat the surface to which such a surface treatment powder has been applied, active ingredients in the powder must be contacted with liquid, which occurs incidentally, e.g., via spills, and/or purposefully, through the addition of liquid to the surface treatment powder and/or to the surface on which it resides. Indeed, to the best of the inventors' knowledge, all surface treatment powders that are currently registered as “sanitizers” with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“U.S. EPA”), require the manual addition of liquid to activate the product and to provide sanitizer level efficacy.
A common use of surface treatment powders is to clean, disinfect and/or sanitize floors in facilities associated with the food industry (including bakeries), animal health, human health, farms and dairies. In these facilities, a surface treatment powder may be spread on the floor, and the active ingredients in the powder are eventually activated by liquid that is spilled on the floor and/or are activated by liquid that is delivered intentionally to the powder and/or to the floor during operations. In these environments, surface treatment powders may impart additional benefits by providing improved traction since the presence of granular material may increase friction on floors that are wet or onto which organic matter has spilled. The presence of surface treatment powders on floors may impart the further benefit of visually indicating that treatment is occurring in specific areas. However, since most if not all commercially available surface treatment powders are white or off-white due to lack of stability in colorants added thereto, they may easily be confused with other substances used in a facility, for example where powdered processing components and/or food ingredients are present (e.g., flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, etc.).
While various surface treatment powders have been made and used, it is believed that no one prior to the inventor(s) has made or used the invention described in the appended claims, which eliminates the need to incidentally or purposefully add liquid to a surface treatment powder and/or to a surface to be treated in order to activate the powder.